A combination of genre professionals and fans from the international scene and the United States have gathered together to create the World SF Travel Fund. The fund has been set up to enable one or two international persons involved in science fiction, fantasy or horror to travel to a major genre event. This year’s recipients are:

Csilla Kleinheincz is a Hungarian-Vietnamese writer living in Kistarcsa, Hungary with her husband and daughter. She is the author of two novels and a short story collection. Her stories can be read in English in the anthologies Interfictions, Heiresses of Russ 2011, and The Apex Book of World SF 2. Some of her stories were translated into Portuguese, Finnish, Czech and Estonian. Csilla is also a translator of works by Peter S. Beagle, Kelly Link, Ursula K. Le Guin and Catherynne M. Valente. She currently works as the editor of the SF/F publishing house Ad Astra, and in her free time edits the Hungarian online SF magazine SFmag.

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is a Filipino writer of science fiction and fantasy. A graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, Rochita was the recipient of the 2009 Octavia Butler Scholarship, and the first Filipina writer to attend Clarion West. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including Interzone, Fantasy Magazine, Apex Magazine, Weird Tales, and the anthologies Robots: The Recent A.I., and The Apex Book of World SF 2. In the Philippines, her short fiction has been published in Philippine Panorama, Philippine Speculative Fiction 2, and Philippine Speculative Fiction 4. Rochita currently resides in the Netherlands with her husband and her two children.

The Fund has set up a Peerbackers Project with the hope of raising $3000, enabling two years of running. The Board, tasked with selecting future candidates, is composed of Lauren Beukes, Aliette de Bodard, Nnedi Okorafor, Ekaterina Sedia, and Charles Tan, reflecting the truly international nature of the SF world today. For inquiries and further information please contact co-administrators Lavie Tidhar or Sean Wallace at worldsftravelfund@gmail.com.